Arun gas restart in June: Minister

Arun gas restart in June: Minister

VIENNA (Reuters): Indonesia hopes to reopen gas fields in the rebellious Aceh province "sometime" in June and resume valuable exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), Energy Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro said on Tuesday.

Yusgiantoro said security was still the main issue for the fields' closure but about 24 soldiers were guarding installations at the fields and the key PT Arun NGL gas plant on the island of Sumatra.

"Arun is still shut in but we are preparing to reopen sometime this month. We are hoping to be ready from a security standpoint and for infrastructure and alignment of instrumentation," Yusgiantoro told Reuters. The minister was attending an OPEC meeting in the Austrian capital.

Exxon Mobil Indonesia -- a unit of U.S.-based Exxon Mobil Corp -- closed three gas fields in March, halting output at the Aceh LNG plant and forcing utilities in Japan and South Korea to seek alternative supplies.

Exxon attributed the closure to the cumulative effect of dozen of security incidents over the past two years in the province, where separatist rebels have been seeking independence for decades.

Exxon Mobil is Indonesia's second-largest LNG producer with total output of 1.6 billion cubic feet per day. In mid-May it said it would send in a security mission to the province to investigate reopening the fields.

Indonesia is the world's biggest LNG exporter and its economy relies heavily on oil and gas exports.

Yusgiantoro said he did not expect any long-term negative impact from the supply outage, despite its leading customers having to scramble for supplies elsewhere.

"We are not worried by people being put off from buying from us or from investing in Indonesia because LNG demand is strong and growing from places like China and India," he said.